The Citizen, 2012-03-01, Page 6PAGE 6. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012.CHAT applauds councillors on walk-out
NDP president urges support of Shannen’s Dream
THE EDITOR,
Over the past number of years,
parents and community members
have turned out in large numbers at
school board meetings in Bluewater
and Avon Maitland, concerned about
the closures of school buildings and
worried about where their children
would attend school after that
closure. The education of their
children in quality school buildings
in their own community is of the
utmost importance to parents.
But imagine how you would feel if
your children were being educated
in a modern school on a toxic waste
dump. Imagine if you needed to
keep them away from their school
because they became very ill every
time they spent a day in school.
Imagine that the government put
some portables on the other side of
town and promised a new school
might eventually be built. Imagine
your children going to school in
portables in -30°C where the doors
do not close properly and the wind
howls in around the cracks. Now
imagine them doing this for over 12
years, or the length of an entire
elementary school career! Imagine
further, that, needing to give your
child the best opportunities,
you must send them, at 13 or 14
years of age, to live in a community
hundreds of miles away, for high
school.
The parents in Huron-Bruce riding
would be livid if this were expected
of their children. They are upset
when their children must move from
one nice school building to another
nice school building a few miles
away. And yet the fastest growing
component of our population,
Aboriginal youth, in settlements like
Attiwapiskat, are trying to learn and
better themselves in these deplorable
conditions.
“Shannen’s Dream” Motion 202
was first introduced by NDP MP
Charlie Angus in September 2010
and then re-introduced in October
2011, following the last federal
election. It calls for the government
to “declare that all First Nation
children have an equal right to high
quality culturally-relevant
education” and “implement policies
to make the First Nation education
system, at a minimum, of equal
quality to provincial school
systems.”
The motion was nicknamed in
honour of Shannen Koostachin, a
15-year-old Attawapiskat youth who
initiated the biggest letter writing
campaign in Canada urging the
federal government to build a new
school in her community. She died
tragically in a car accident in 2010.
Motion 202 was debated in the
House of Commons on Feb. 17, with
several supportive MPs highlighting
the statistics and reports showing
that educational standards and
facilities in First Nations
communities are drastically below
those off reserve.
The vote for the NDP motion will
come on Feb. 27 – just weeks after
Shannen’s Dream spokesperson
Chelsea Edwards, a 16-year-old
from Attawapiskat, with six other
First Nations youth ambassadors,
spoke to the United Nations
Committee on the Rights of the
Child and the inequalities facing
Canadian Aboriginal youth.
The Huron Bruce NDP is asking
the good citizens of Huron Bruce to
send a letter or an e-mail, or to make
a phone call. Please make your voice
heard to our Conservative MP Ben
Lobb. We would not stand for such
deplorable learning conditions for
our own children. Nor should we, as
caring Canadians, stand for third
world learning conditions for
children anywhere in our country.
Please urge your MP to vote with
his conscience and support
Shannen’s Dream. Help provide a
better school situation for the
children of Attiwapiskat in their
formative years, and to improve the
learning situation for children on all
reserve schools in Canada.
Your MP can be reached at
ben.lobb@parl.gc.ca or 519-524-
6560. The Constituency Office is at
30 Victoria Street North, Goderich.
Willi Laurie, President
Huron-Bruce NDP.
THE EDITOR,
Thank you Burk, Alex, Brian and
the rest who walked out...
Politicians – including some from
Huron County – walked out on
Premier Dalton McGuinty en masse
in protest of wind energy
development during his opening
address at the county’s largest
annual conference for rural
municipalities.
Politicians were gathered for the
opening ceremonies of the combined
conference of Ontario Good Roads
Association and Rural Ontario
Municipal Association in the Royal
York Hotel in Toronto’s main
meeting room, which has the
capacity to seat 1,670 people, where
McGuinty was scheduled to address
municipal leaders for the first
time since his third consecutive
electoral victory and after the release
of the Drummond Report. As he
made his way to the podium,
municipal politicians from across
the province stood and left the
room.
Among the local politicians were:
councillors Burkhard Metzger, Alex
Westerhout and Brian Barnim of
Central Huron; Councillor Tyler
Hessel of Bluewater; Mayor George
Robertson, Deputy Reeve Jim
Deitrich and Councillor Dave
Frayne of South Huron. Huron-
Bruce MPP Lisa Thompson and
Grey-Bruce-Owen Sound MPP Bill
Walker also walked out of the
meeting. Outside the room, they
were greeted by a crowd opposed to
wind energy development and
anti-wind buttons were handed
out.
“I have issues with how it’s pushed
into the community. [The
government] is not listening to
the concerns that are out there,”
Metzger said. “What it really
boils down to is: What is their
agenda for rural Ontario? If they
choose to behave that way, I think
it’s only fair to walk out on the guy
like that.”
Metzger said the majority of
people who elected him to municipal
council in 2010 wanted him to walk
out on their behalf.
Prior to the conference, the
Municipality of Arran-Elderslie
circulated a resolution to Ontario
municipalities calling for the
Premier to invoke an immediate one-
year moratorium on wind energy
development with yearly extensions
as required. It demanded the
moratorium be in place before the
ROMA/OGRA 2012 conference or
municipal officials would walk out
on the Premier “in a show of
solidarity to once again demonstrate
to our provincial government our
frustration, anger and
disappointment over their complete
and total mishandling of the Green
Energy Act and industrial wind
turbines in particular.”
The Green Energy Act, in part,
created the Feed-In Tariff program
and associated pricing structure for
renewable energy contracts in
Ontario.
Sincerely,
Central Huron Against Turbines
(CHAT).
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Letters to the Editor
Blyth school
petition garners
support of 631
THE EDITOR,
Here are some reflections on some
of the past musings from the pen of
Citizen Publisher Keith Roulston.
• July 2, 2009 - Communities
Disenfranchised
“The Communities of Blyth and
Belgrave were changed forever last
week when the trustees of the
Avon Maitland District School
Board, acting on advice of senior
staff, passed a death sentence on the
Blyth and East Wawanosh
Public Schools. Throughout this
process the Avon Maitland board’s
accommodation review process
has been proved a farce...[with] the
real reason was to obviously
solve the problem of declining
enrolment at F.E. Madill...the
process was even more deceptive
because all the while...the board’s
staff had already applied for
provincial funding to build a new K-
6 school to replace the existing
schools.”
• July 9, 2009 - Fighting
Invisibility
“While the short-term problem for
the Blyth and Belgrave communities
is loss of their schools, the long-term
issue for these, and communities like
Brussels too, is to fight becoming
invisible...Small communities are
going to have to fight to keep from
being invisible. It may mean we
must be noisy and impolite. We
cannot afford to be complacent and
watch all our community
infrastructure lost.”
• February 23, 2012 – Our Bit
toward the Deficit Fight
“Many residents of Belgrave,
Blyth and Brussels would willingly
give a multi-million-dollar boost to
the Ontario government’s attempts
to reign in the $16 billion (and
growing) deficit. Premier McGuinty,
please cancel construction of the
new Maitland River Elementary
School in Wingham before any more
money is spent.”
Roulston’s past comments will
remain part of the present and will
be part of our future for a very long
time to come. In the name of saving
money for the taxpayer and
improving the education experience
for the student, the opposite will turn
out to be true.
Here are my words for today:
Accountability, Hubris, Impunity,
Integrity, Responsibility, Trust,
Trustee.
And in deference to Denny
Scott’s Feb. 16 story about
the petition, the final number
of signatures hit 631. If 219
signatures was “overwhelming”
what must 631 be? Over-
overwhelming?
Regards, Greg Sarachman.
WALTON 519-887-8429